Paul Brian Garvey

By Paul Birch on Jul 25, 09 08:55 AM

COMIC BOOKS fans of the eighties when the range of titles was diverse and sales figures solid, shouldn't need reminding about a man who went by the surname of Garvey.

As one half of the respected Akin & Garvey inking partnership, he worked on countless books for Marvel, DC and others.

Paul Brian Garvey (dropping his forname when being credited) and Ian Aiken made their name on an extensive and popular run inking over Sal Buscema's pencils on The Incredible Hulk at Marvel, and spent about two years on Rom Space Knight, developed from the american toy robot.

Working at Marvel they naturally worked on many superhero titles. However, Garvey surprised me by saying that genre wasn't one he was initially that keen on, but he then explained: "I can honestly say that I was perfectly happy because I had the chance to ink a lot of great artists."

Regardless, I must declare I loved the work they did on the superhero married couple series The Vision & The Scarlet Witch, where all the creators involved seemed to do a sterling job; it had good stand alone stories that built to a conclusive fouth issue, each issue also connnected with Marvel's back catalogue while giving something that added to the company's mythos as well, that subsequently got used and sometimes misused by future writers and artists working on those characters.

Heading almost towards robot territory again the pairing also had a good run on Iron Man and worked from 1986-1988 on the original Transformers comics. Over at DC they worked on mini-series and shorter runs like Firestorm.

They also worked for independent American comic book companies; I could be mistaken but I think one of their earliest professional collaborations was within an anthology published by Pacific Comics and latterly quite a bit of work for Neal Adams' Continuity Comics, where again my memory shows its age but I seem to recall them having some story input too. As a team they went their separate ways in the early 90s.

Working solo over the next few years, Garvey contributed to titles published by Marvel, Dark Horse and DC, where his 1995-96 run as inker on The New Gods was his last consistant outing in comics.

"After the great comic book crash of 95-96 I worked for Dreamworks feature films in the clean-up department (roughly equivalent to inking in comics) on Prince of Egypt and El Dorado, and on Spirit in rough animation," Garvey explained. "I also did Harry Potter and Galador (a live action sci-fi kids' show) style guides."

The fact was that he had been worked solidly as an artist since he was eighteen, so after Garvey decided to leaving Dreamworks he became what he jokingly refers to as a "civilian."

Of those more recent times, and now living in Tucson, Arizona,he said: "I only did artsy side jobs if it was something that appealed to me." Fortunately, that interest has been increasing of late, as he revealed "I'm itching to get back into art full-time."

This fact should draw the attention of those publishers who want to put some quality into their finished products by working with an established talent, and one who's continued to diversify his styles.